Making time to explore
I’ve been on holiday, and it was a ruddy lovely trip. Sorry to rub it in a bit, but the trip gave me a chance to explore a new city, in a country I’ve never been to before with good friends and cold beer. Like I said it was a ruddy lovely trip.
Berlin is somewhere that I’ve wanted to go for some time, and after a busy few months there were few things I would rather be doing than exploring a new place.
The trip
The days were long with no real plan accept to wander the city at our own pace and see as much as we could in the time we had there. The evenings were slightly different, and consisted of a lot of local sausages and every type of beer imaginable. When in Rome.
A section of the Berlin wall complete with graffiti.
We took in the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, sections of the Berlin wall and the Holocaust Memorial on the first day, with the Gendarmenmarkt Christmas Market next to Berlin Concert Hall taking up most of the evening until we decided to head to a bar to finish the night off.
Strolling (I say strolling but it was very busy, and shuffling doesn’t have the same ring to it) around the Christmas market in the evening was huge amounts of fun. Every other market stall had a different local food to try or something else ‘mulled’ to get tipsy on. There were stalls full of local crafts, and stalls filled with Christmas tat and each one was bustling with people from all over the world haggling, talking and laughing.
It was a gooood first day.
On the second day we took a long walk down to the Jewish Museum in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin for a little education. I’ve been baptised as a Christian, but definitely wouldn’t class myself as religious, however I have always been interested in its history and the people involved so this was a very interesting tour and something I would recommend.
We headed to a Bavarian “beer hall” in the evening for some more sausages, mounds of sauerkraut and steins of beer as big as my head. Where German people store all this beer is beyond me.
Sausage, beer and more sausage and beer. Have I mentioned before that it was ruddy lovely trip?
Getting away, seeing a new place and taking some time to read and reflect on the last year was refreshing.
I got the chance to read ‘Zero to One‘ by Peter Thiel (which I couldn’t recommend enough) and ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari‘ by Robin Sharma. The second was certainly something I wouldn’t normally read but it was recommended by a friend. Getting away gave me the perfect opportunity to really digest the content which is something I may have not had the chance to do back home, and I’m really glad I did as I have already begun to try to carry out some changes in my life because of the book.
Making time to explore, ask questions and take in as much as I can is something I don’t do enough. I always come back with more drive, ideas and ambition to make something of myself, so why do I not do it more often?
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P.S. This article is the first to include images, and they’re not even mine! It would be rude of me not to give a shout out to my wonderful wife for letting me pilfer her Instagram photos. Cheers Anna.